Derrida highly appreciated Austin’s study of performatives, but he also launched an attack towards Austin, and he emphasized that the dividing line between performatives and contatives is not absolute, they are not excluding, on the contrary, there exists utterances being both of performatives and contatives. Derrida also found a destructional strategy in Austin’s work—replacing performatives—the “marginal study” as the “center” of  linguistic study.

Derrida made clear his position on the question of “iterability”. He was opposed to Austin’s suggestion excluding those “non-serious” utterances—perfomative utterances said by an actor on the stage, or introduced in a poem, or spoken in soliloquy. Because signs possess the characteristic of being readable, every sign, no matter linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written, can be cited, Derrida thought “citation” reflects the mechanism of iterability—the prerequite to performatives. The “non-serious” will no longer be able to be excluded from “ordinary” language as Austin wished. He illustrated that writing is a means of perpetuating thoughts and signs in the absence of the receiver and the writer, the presence and intentions belong to the structure, written signs guarantee the iteration and the readability, iterability is the most important characters of writing. Writing will not be parasitic on spoken language anymore, spoken language won’t be superior to writing because of its directness. The assimilation of speech to writing can be accomplished in the condition of iterability.

But Searle emphasized that Derrida confused the iterability and the permanence of writing. It’s undeniable that Derrida has put forward an important argument, but I personally agree with Searle’s opinion—permanence is essential to the conservation and circulation of writing. As to me, iterability is an inherent characteristic of linguistic signs, the improvement and enlargement is the inherent law of linguistic development as well. In his attempt to defend Austin and the theory of speech act, Searle argued that iterability is the necessary presupposition of the forms which that intentionality takes instead of something in conflict with the intentionality of linguistic acts. Besides, Searle thought Derrida misunderstood Austin’s argument about “non-serious” utterances, which are not supposed to be standard examples to be analyzed, Derrida mistook “the status of Austin’s exclusion of parasitic forms of discourse from his preliminary investigations of speech acts”. Besides, Searle argued there is no any moral judgment on the term “parasitic” and Derrida confused citationality with parasitic discourse.

Derrida questioned Austin explaining meaning in terms of context, he thought Austin attached importance on context, analyse of Austin requires a value of context, even there is only an obscure context, “intention”, which affects performative utterances, will always depends on context. Then performative communication becomes the communication of an intentional meaning of writer or speaker, even if that meaning has no referent. The presence of intention and purport means everything is in an integrated sense, including conventions, grammar of words and phrases or other semantic components. Derrida indicated that meaning does not come from the determinate context, but comes from the iterability of utterances. Austin argued that there is no “pure” performative, those “non-serious” performatives are “parasitic” upon on “ordinary” language. Derrida thought that the normal or parasitic uses of language could not be definitely determined, he claimed that there is a complementation, to illustrate meaning coming from the iterability, Derrida gave the example of signature: the absolute singularity of a signature-event and a signature-form must be retained to assure the effects of signature, and a signature must have a repeatable, iterable and imitable form and be detached from the present and singular intention of its production because of the rigorous purity of those effets. Derrida is opposed to Austin’s opinion that speech act theory can derive an explicit content, this example of signature also explained iterability of utterances and indicated that in different content, the latent sense is changeable.

We could not judge whose argument is superior though the debate, the controversy between Jacques Derrida and John Searle focusing on Austin’s theory of speech act may reflect the misunderstanding between Anglo-American and the continental philosophies.